Ron Howard is also tired of those Da Vinci Code movies

Ron Howard has backed out of directing The Lost Symbol, the third entry in Dan Brown’s popular Jesus-puzzle series. According to Deadline, Howard’s decision is based on his not wanting to “do that thing over, the same character and the same stories,” and also being really tired of making money. It gets so boring, making money. You get Tom Hanks in a sports jacket and run him through a maze where he stares ponderously at old statues and then coughs up an exegesis on ancient gnostic scrolls whenever there’s a rare moment of silence and then everyone buys a ticket and it’s all just so tedious, this dirty business of dreams. Anyway, Sony is reportedly already searching behind every national monument for a new director, because the trilogy must be completed within the next year before a secret, long-thought-extinct order of the Knights Templar returns to spark the new Crusades. Or something like that.